Tea party movement in Mass. assesses its future

Sunday

Dec 30, 2012 at 6:00 AMDec 30, 2012 at 6:32 AM

By Lee Hammel CORRESPONDENT

The tea party movement in Massachusetts is reassessing its strategy, if not its goals, after a very tough election.

Few predicted this environment after heady election results two years ago for conservatives such as the tea party. Massachusetts led the way in a special election in January 2010 with the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the race for the U.S. Senate seat held for decades by the nation's premier liberal, Edward M. Kennedy.

And it just kept getting better, with Republicans sweeping Democrats out of the leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives in the fall. A number of the Republicans were dyed-in-the-wool tea-partiers while virtually every Republican was aided by the ideology and the boots on the ground of tea party members.

But with tea party members and other conservatives setting their sights on the big prize — the loathed President Obama and the probability of repealing his hated healthcare law if they could elect his Republican opponent — something went terribly wrong last month.

The president was re-elected by a comfortable margin — about 4 percent in the popular vote and 126 electoral college votes — and House Republicans — including some who strongly identified with the tea party — lost elections, although not enough to lose their majority.

Locally, tea party momentum stopped, too. While Republican state Reps. Kevin J. Kuros of Uxbridge and Ryan C. Fattman of Sutton, who knocked off Democrats two years ago, retained their seats, conservative state Rep. Steven L. Levy, R-Marlboro, was defeated by Danielle Gregoire, the Democrat he unseated two years ago.

Justin Brooks, who stepped down from his Twin City Tea Party leadership post to run for state representative in Leominster, lost.

“We were let down,” said Mary Lotze of Leominster, a board member of the Twin City Tea Party.

“We knew we had made a tremendous impact for conservative values in 2010,” she said. “Then we thought we are potentially on the same trajectory to continue” this year.

Ms. Lotze said her chapter based in Fitchburg and Leominster met at the end of last month to consider how it should change its tactics, without coming up with an answer. Despite some despair and “where did we go wrong self-reflection,” she said “we're getting re-energized. We want to turn it into something.

“How can we regain our momentum, because we're not going away. We're not putting down our flags and going home,” she said.

John O'Mara, cofounder of the Northboro Tea Party, refused to concede defeat. “We were discouraged by the outcome, but that does not diminish for one second our dedication to picking up where we left off before the election.”

Not even the re-election of the president, who campaigned on letting tax cuts expire on those earning more than $250,000 — anathema to the tea party— should allow that policy to be implemented, Mr. O'Mara contends.

His tea party enthusiasm is undiminished, he said. “It was a relatively close election — not 60-40 — and therefore not a mandate to shift this government to the left.”

Not commenting on the fact that President Bush, who implemented across-the-board tax cuts after he was elected with less than a majority of the popular vote, Mr. O'Mara said, “Taxing the rich is a moral issue.

“You're not treating people fairly or squarely or equally. All we're doing is fanning the flames of class warfare.”

Both he and Mr. Mandile, who lives in Webster, said leaders from tea party groups across the state have been meeting quietly, including in Worcester, to map out an agenda for 2013 and beyond. Although there nominally are 30 to 40 tea party groups across the state, Mr. Mandile said 15 or 20 of them are active.

What won't change, they and Ms. Lotze said, are tea party core values. Those are, Mr. Mandile said, fiscal responsibility, limited government that conforms to the Constitution, and promoting free markets.

Ms. Lotze said Twin City Tea Party members “felt we went underground a little bit” working as individuals for candidates instead of attending public meetings and rallies. Reflecting tea party strategy across the country, she said, that allowed mainstream media to say that “we had gone away” and become a non-issue, and define the group as obstructionist because of the officials that it had supported.”

Indeed, Bonnie Johnson, head of the Seven Hills Tea Party in Worcester, said she put all her energies into a campaign for clean elections and her tea party chapter has stopped functioning. She was active in monitoring the polls in both the primary and general elections this year.Mr. O'Mara said Northboro tea partiers put their efforts, as individuals, into working for Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania and Ted Cruz's successful Senate race in Texas.

“You don't see as many people” attending rallies, Mr. O'Mara said, because “we found that's not the most effective way of effecting outcomes. It's much better to get your people coordinated to knock on doors or put together a phone bank.”

“We are not walking with our heads down and wringing our hands,” Mr. O'Mara said. “I don't see serious mistakes that we made” over the past year.

The tea party has been criticized for working against moderate Republicans such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, in favor of stricter conservatives, such as Richard E. Mourdock, who lost to Democrats in November. Mr. Mandile said it is not a mistake “where you're willing to take some steps backward so that in the future you can win some.”

Mr. Mandile would not say if he supported Scott Brown this year, after Mr. Brown voted for the Dodd-Frank bill and for allowing indefinite detention of Americans not charged with a crime. “I would have preferred Brown to (Elizabeth) Warren, but I would have preferred to have another choice,” he said.

The real challenge for the tea party, he said, is “to change the mindset of the American people as to the proper function of government, so that the people that do go to Washington will feel that they can make principled stands on some of these policies.”

Because that is not yet the case, he said, he has seen no acceptable proposal to avert the fiscal cliff even though there are about 20 tea party politicians in Congress. Mitt Romney's proposal would not have done it, Mr. Mandile said, and even the best proposal he knows of, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan of a year ago, would not have wiped out the budget deficit until 2030.

Because the problem is not lack of revenue, but too much spending, Mr. Mandile said, he was unhappy even with Republican House Speaker John Boehner's proposal 1-1/2 years ago to accept $1 in increased revenue for every $4 in spending cuts, never mind the most recent post-election proposal that reverses that ratio.

Mr. Mandile said the tea party would like $10 in budget cuts for each $1 in revenue.